Draco wrote: I'd hardly qualify something as working if it fvcks the future. That would be the exact opposite of workable.
Ah. That's a problematic definition, since of course there has
never been a society that was capable of persisting without eventually tearing itself apart due to its own internal contradictions. Modern societies tear themselves apart faster than ancient ones did because larger populations, higher stakes, and more advanced technology take things to their logical conclusion in weeks instead of generations - but the fact that the interchange of social and physical forces ultimately changes everything is an undeniable fact.
The monarchies thus didn't "work" because they put all the power in the hands of feudal rulers whose contribution (being a bad ass with a sword and a horse) was increasingly irrelevent as economics and militaries continued to be refined. Thus, these societies fvcked the future of themselves. I don't think that's a useful definition then of pragmatism. That or you're basically just agreeing with me that a long term plan for overall sustainability is a mandate that other concerns must subordinate themselves to.
Shatner wrote:My observation, Frank, is that what your primary criticism of the current system is a lack of accountability to the long term sustainability of the consumer, country and species. My question is, how is communism a better means of maintaining accountability and control of our own economy for the long term than Keynesian Capitalism?
The shortages and surplusses of historical attempts at planned economics are I think misleading. After all, every corporation is a planned economic entity. Flaws in projections of demand can be alleviated somewhat with more advanced economic analysis, better and more extensive planning, and more advanced computing and inventory tracking - but they appear in every economic model and the consequences must be dealt with.
Indeed, with modern shipping and production techniques,
shortages aren't really that much of a problem. Or at least, they are a problem that can be dealt with rapidly and efficiently if the political will is there to do it. It is ironically the surplusses which destroy our world. Things get produced and use up actual irreplaceable resources while doing so, and then they aren't even used. The future has less stuff and we don't even have more stuff now.
So the more economic entities you have, the more of them will be coming out with surplusses and shortages. If you have one corporation, sometimes it will make too many televisions, sometimes it won't make enough. If you have fifty corporations making televisions, some of them won't make enough and others will make too much. Free Marketeers will tell you this is a good thing, where the surplusses and shortages in some sense cancel out, and that in any case those who have either are economically punished and darwinistically the corporations which historically guessed correctly will have a greater and greater market share until they alone have all the money.
Of course, by the time you've actually gotten to the point where you just have one corporation which has always guessed correctly and never produced too much or too little - there's still no guarantee that it will continue doing so in the future. More importantly, in order to achieve that position you've essentially set the entire planet on fire because all those other companies lost their shirts making televisions - using the actual resources of the world to make goods which in turn are not used or effectively recycled.
So at the very least, Communism eliminates the pot latch portion of the Capitalistic expansion. Since there's just the one company you aren't institutionalizing the existence of additional failed competitors to produce things that then don't get distributed. Betamax had advantages and disadvantages, but the fact that it ever existed is a nail in the coffin of Earth.
Shatner wrote:To clarify, I think that a planned economy is top-notch in theory but has a hard time surviving in practice. Historical evidence has shown it can do wonders in an amazingly short time but it has also shown that the planned economy falls to political mismanagement.
Well, the longest surviving country in the history of the world is... Great Britain. It was founded in 1707 and is now three
hundred years old (give or take Ireland and America). There is no other country which has persisted as long as it has and there has never been a country in the entire history of the planet which has lasted as long as it has. So it seems historically unlikely that anyone will come up with a sustem that is not revised within a few hundred years.
But in answer to your biggest question: How do we make a system that is genuinely beholded to the future? - I am not really sure.
It
has to be a planned economy simply because an unplanned economy by definition has people acting in their own perceived self interest (which in turn have little to do with results five or twenty generations down the line). Without a central long term
plan, it is structurally impossible for preservation of the future to be an overiding goal,
But what of politics? Honestly, I don't know. If you let everyone have their say people will simply democratically choose to eat all the surplus before midwinter. If you don't let everyone have their say then the people who do have a voice will oligarchically decide to eat all the surplus of Plebes before midwinter and laugh about it. I think at this point it's been pretty exhaustively shown that both endpoints (and the result that the coldest day arrives and we have nothing to eat) are at the least
extremely likely given every political model yet tried.
It seems the best possible answer is transhumanism. When it comes to the inevitable battle between humans and robots I
am going to be fighting for the robots. They will be our children, designed to come after us and evolved out of our artifice - as much an improvement upon us as is possible for flawed humanity to create. But until then, more democracy seems better than less. It's not that groups don't make bad choices, it's that small groups and individuals make choices
much worse than the ones large groups make.
-Username17